‘Stop smiling!’: Brock Turner transcripts show he laughed after witnesses stopped him

Newly released transcripts in the trial of Stanford rapist Brock Turner, show the former All-American high school swimmer radically changed his story from the day he was taken into custody until the day he was let off with a slap on the wrist by Judge Aaron Persky.

According to the 1,000-page trial transcript obtained by the Guardian, Turner wasn’t the confused innocent who believed he was having consensual sex as he claimed during his trial.

In initial testimony given to police by witnesses who stopped the sexual assault on the unconscious woman next to a dumpster behind a bar, Turner laughed when he was pulled off of his victim.

Peter Jonsson, one of two graduate students who stopped Turner, told police that “she looked asleep”, and that the athlete tried to run away “as fast as he could” when he and a friend approached.

After stopping Turner from fleeing, Jonsson remembered, “I noticed that he was smiling. So I said, ‘Why are you smiling? Stop smiling.’ … I said, again, ‘What are you doing? She’s unconscious.’”

Asked later about the laughing by prosecutor Alaleh Kianerci, Turner claimed: “I was laughing at the situation of how ridiculous it was.”

Speaking with police the night of the assault, Turner described a different sequence of events that radically changed before he went to trial. Under questioning from police, Turner initially stated he couldn’t remember how he and the young woman ended up on the ground. However, during the trial his defense attorney was able to refresh his memory, with Turner painting a picture of a couple holding hands and falling to the ground together.

During testimony, Turner’s attorney Mike Armstrong asked him, “After you obtained her concurrence or permission to finger her, and you did finger her, what happened then?”

“I fingered her for a minute. And I thought she had an orgasm. And then I – well, during that time, I asked her if she liked it, and she said, uh-huh,” Turner replied according to the transcript.

During cross examination, prosecutor Kianerci asked him why he didn’t tell investigators about that the evening of the assault.

“I was completely freaked out,” Turner replied.

According to Deputy Jeff Taylor, who was one of the first on the scene, he tried to speak with the woman but she was unconscious.

“I tried to verbally ask, you know, ‘Are you okay? Can you hear me?’ And I was getting no response,” he testified. “So I started doing it quite a bit louder, basically to the point of yelling at her to see if I could get any response whatsoever. And I didn’t get anything.”

Turner’s evolving story came as no surprise to his victim, who said she fully expected it in her victim’s statement that went viral.

“So one year later, as predicted, a new dialogue emerged,” she wrote. “Brock had a strange new story, almost sounded like a poorly written young adult novel with kissing and dancing and hand holding and lovingly tumbling onto the ground, and most importantly in this new story, there was suddenly consent. One year after the incident, he remembered, oh yeah, by the way she actually said yes, to everything, so.”

About the Author

Tom Boggioni is based in the quaint seaside community of Pacific Beach in less quaint San Diego. He writes about politics, media, culture, and other annoyances. Mostly he spends his days at the beach gazing at the horizon waiting for the end of the world, or the sun to go down. Whichever comes first.